MuseumNext - Green Team

The Utah Museum of Natural History, whose mission is to illuminate the natural world and the place of humans within it, will open an amazing new facility in 2011. The building is now rising in the foothills above Salt Lake City, and design documents are in their final stages for nine interdisciplinary and interconnected permanent galleries inside. Among these exhibit experiences is to be a space called Utah Futures.

Utah Futures will contain an integrated suite of dynamic learning experiences designed to advance public engagement with science and technology in pursuit of both understanding of, and solutions to, significant challenges facing our community, our nation, and the world. The project includes development and implementation of in-gallery experiences that elicit dialogue and social engagement; new media presentations and social networking platforms that offer visitor engagement beyond the walls of the Museum; and public programs that encourage lively and meaningful discourse among community members and the scientific community.

Our goal is to open with an engaging exhibit experience that also serves as a testing ground for the advancement of user-informed media, programming and exhibit development. Utah Futures will be a place where change and innovation are the norm, within the gallery and among its connected virtual spaces. Envisioned exhibit components focus on visitor voice in the exhibition experience and include a decision-making interactive media piece focused on sustainable communities; direct connections to a series of real and virtual trails to Utah and beyond; social networking that invites visitors to take the museum home; one of many ‘talk-back’ stations in the museum offering visitors an opportunity to share their perspectives on changing topics via a video recording booth; a series of changing exhibits–’stories from the frontlines’ – that highlight research, implementation and impacts in sustainability innovation; and a low-tech scenario building game that encourages visitors to envision the future they hope for and to devise approaches that might take them there. Utah Futures will be rooted in place, deeply tied to community, and reliant on visitor input and exchange to create collective knowledge and potential pathways to sustainability.

Primary among the challenges for a gallery that is about the future is that it could seem outdated the minute it opens, so we’ll be designing and operating Utah Futures as a ‘Complex Adaptive System’ that draws upon competition and cooperation among the Museum’s content developers, scientists, and community members who visit in person and online to keep the experience fresh and moving forward. Additional challenges come with media and digital platforms that may create fear and confusion in some audiences and seduction of all things new in others. We are eager to learn from colleagues who have dared to imagine the future in their exhibit experiences, who have dipped their toes into the digital realm, and who can share their triumphs and warnings with us as we move forward.

What do you think? What advice could you offer Becky and her colleagues?